In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal Mozilla was the first major brand to announce it was “pausing” its advertising on Facebook. Today, the company has announced a new add-on that will help prevent Facebook from tracking your browsing across the web.
The Facebook Container Extension isolates your identity into a separate container, making it more challenging for Facebook to track what you do on other websites through third-party cookies.
Facebook has been under fire after data from tens of millions of Facebook accounts was leaked to British data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica – a scandal that caused the social media giant’s stock to tank and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg to agree to testify before Congress.
Mozilla said it would not collect data from the extension and would only be able to see the number of times the extension was installed or removed.
When the extension is installed, it will automatically delete the user’s Facebook cookies and log them out of the social network. The next time that user visits Facebook, the site will open in a blue-colored browser tab. When the user clicks on a link to navigate away from Facebook, it will open outside of the blue container tab, thereby stopping Facebook from tracking what happens next.